Dangers
Dangers of Mozart Death * Death on Mozart can really hurt you, especially on higher levels. Not only you lose significant amount of earned experiences (depending on your level and xp pool can go into negative) and all your equipment stays in the room where you died (and mobs can loot it), but you do also lose learned percentage (1-10 depending on your level) from EVERY ability that you have and that is not of Difficulty Free (abilities that you have maxed already when you gain them) and you have to re-practice them. * Don't forget that it is a lot more difficult to get your equipment back from most places when you are not wearing any. If you didn't die in some quite safe place it is better to ask for help with corpse retrieval. * Life Disciple clerics do have a spell called Greater Restoration that can return to you portion of your lost "adepts" (ability advancements) and experiences, but they are rare, at the time this guide is written there are pretty much only 1-2 such clerics among all the characters, so don't count on it, especially since it must be cast within 30 minutes of dying. Deathtraps * Even worse than being killed by some monster is to "hit a DT", enter a Deathtrap room that will immediately kill you - ceiling or floor caved in, you sprung some trap, fall into a pit or waterfall etc. * Hitting a DT not only kills you as if killed in combat with some mob, but it also has huge chance to do significant damage to every item you wear or carry. Some items can be immediately destroyed ("scrapped"), others will need repair or have their maximal durability lowered. * Since you can't go get your corpse back from the DT, your equipment is transported with you to the Temple of Nevrast. * You can usually spot a DT using Scry to see what is in the room you are about to enter before you go in. It usually doesn't have any exit and in the description you can read about how you died horribly :). Unfortunately it doesn't always work: some rooms are "no scry" which mean that you can't look into them in advance, others don't have visible exits but are not DTs. There are also so called "timed DTs", rooms that you can enter, but if you are in them too long (and "too long" is very random, it can be really fast), you will DT. There are even items that do load inside time DTs. Also there can be rooms that are not timed DTs themselves, but do teleport you into a DT. * There is a skill called Find deathraps, but be aware that while finding a DT using this skill means that the room you are testing is a DT, not finding a DT DOESN'T mean the room is not a DT, it could have just failed. "Live DTs" * Live DTs are mobs that when met are usually deadly - they can be simply a strong mob that you have to kill to get out of the room you entered (and he can be even aggressive), or they can have special ability that can immediately kill you. For example some (but usually really high level) mobs do have the ability to suffocate you, which, if not resisted through saves instantly kills you. There are also mobs that do block certain exits from the room, some even all of them, including the one you used to enter the room. Also see next paragraph. Gazing mobs * Some mobs do have a deadly gaze - for example Medusa (which you can meet already in Lost temple near Graecia) or Basilisk have a petrifying gaze, that can turn you into stone and immediately kill you. It does even work when you just scry into a room where such mob is standing! (it doesn't work when you just scan tho). * There are 3 ways you can protect yourself from gaze abilities: *# Gaze reflect - this spell is the best protection, tho it only works 100% if you either have that spell cast on you (only shadowmage gets the spell, so other classes can have it cast only through some scroll or wand) or if you are wearing an item with Gaze reflect on your eyes. Wearing it on any other slot gives only partial protection (see help gaze reflect). *# Closing your eyes before entering the room with such mob - yup, Mozart has this option: you can close your eyes using "close eyes" command, but you will open them again (besides typing "open eyes") simply by typing look or examine something (even by mistake). Problem with this possibility is that you are blind - you do fight worse, can't use targeted abilities, initiate combat, don't see room/exits etc. *# Having immunity to paralyze - Most higher level players do have items with Immunity to Paralyze, since it is quite dangerous (see next paragraph). Problem with this possibility is that even tho it makes you immune to Petrification, and therefore to immediate death, it doesn't gives you immunity to other effects that come with some gazes, like Slow. Drain and Paralyze * Some mobs (especially different types of undead) have special effects to drain or paralyze the player. * Both effects are usually countered by wearing items with Immunity to Drain and Paralyze all the time and you should never engage in combat with undead without those immunities. * Danger of drain (and also of spell called Feeblemind) is that they "drain" your abilities, removing some learned "adepts" (percentages) from them. If that happens, you have to either re-practice them or quickly find a cleric with Restoration spell, which, if applied in less than 30 min, can restore some (can be used repeatedly) of the lost adepts. * Danger of paralyze is quite obvious - when you are paralyzed, you can't move, fight, flee or anything else (unless you are a caster with both Silent casting and Motionless casting specs) until the paralyze wears off, which usually takes longer than for the mob that paralyzed you to kill you. Aggressive/Assisting/Shouting mobs * Even in quite a low level zones you can meet a strong mob that is aggressive, will attack you on sight, and you can't do anything else than to flee. Be aware of the fact, that some mobs can track you down, some can even hunt you outside of the zones you met them. Leaving zone often help, if it doesn't, either ask some higher level player to kill the mob or rent out of the game and back again. * Quite a lot of mobs do assist if they see you fight with another mob in the room where they are standing. Unfortunately almost all of them will assist the mob against you, not the other way around. Be aware of that when you do fight in a room with more than 1 mob. * Some mobs when in combat do shout for help and other mobs (usually guards in the zone) come running to you and attack you. It can be quite dangerous, because there can be a lot of mobs coming and also even if you finished fight before they came (and in that case they will usually not attack you unless they are naturally aggressive), they will follow you around and attack the moment you attack another mob. Teleports and disappearing exits * It usually doesn't happen in low level areas (unless you count doors locking when zone resets), but in some zones you can enter teleport that can teleport you to another (sometimes quite dangerous) room, for example with a strong aggressive mob. * Or it can happen that you enter a room e.g. from south but the room suddenly doesn't have entrance back south. * Worst possibility unfortunately is this: some rooms when entered do have exit back in the direction you entered from, but it does lead into completely different room than the one you came from. It can even lead into a DT! Room damage * Some rooms on the mud do so called room damage - freezing rooms will do cold type damage while you are inside, burning rooms fire damage etc. While the damage is not usually extremely high, it can accumulate if you are in the room for a longer time (e.g. fighting) or if there are several such rooms in succession. It can be of course countered by having immunity to that type of damage. * Specific type of room damage is drowning, which can happen if you lose Water breath spell while underwater. That can kill you really fast. (see next paragraph) Dispelling mobs and loss of equipment * Some mobs do use either Dispel magic spell or spell removing special abilities. If that happens and you lose Sanctuary or some specific type of damage resist spells, you will suddenly get a lot more damage. If you lose Water breath while underwater, you can drown, losing Fly can kill you by falling from heights, losing True Sight can suddenly put you into darkness where you don't see the room you are in nor the exits, losing Strength spell (which can happen even from Weakness spell) can make you overburdened and unable to move or flee etc. Best way to counter this is be aware of the possibility and be prepared for it if it happens. You can also mitigate dispel by having the main spells in equipment, not as casted spells. * Even having spell or immunity in equipment unfortunately doesn't protect you 100%. When piece of equipment is hit by a spell, magical effect or strong blunt hit, it can be crushed/burned/corrupted etc and if it's durability was low to start with, it can completely break and item is destroyed ("scrapped"). Some effects, like acid based spells, Disintegrate spell or dragon breath can do really a lot of damage to equipment in single hit. Only ways to at least partially mitigate it is having high saves, immunities to certain types of damage or casting Bless spell on both yourself and every suitable piece of your equipment before dangerous fight. Flee doesn't always save you * When you are in combat and you find yourself losing, you usually try to flee. But not always that will save you: *# Flee can fail - it depends for example on your dexterity, chance and probably also on level and dexterity of the mob you are fleeing from. You can spam flee, but that leads us to ad 2). *# You can flee to even worse situation - you can flee to even more dangerous mob, further from exit you need to reach or you can even flee into a nearby DT. So DON'T FLEE WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT CONSEQUENCES. To help you with that are specs Retreat, which allows you to specify in which direction you want to flee from the room and Scramble, that allows you to flee even if you are sitting e.g. from being bashed. *# To be able to flee, you have to have opportunity - if some mobs keep you bashed and you don't have scramble or the only exit from the room are doors that just closed, you will not be able to flee. So start trying to flee in time and not in the last possible moment. Recall doesn't always work * Quite usual way of trying to get from dangerous situation is to use spell, scroll or potion of recall to get back to safety. It doesn't always work as you would wish - potion can get smashed, spell can fail, some zones are norecall, you can't recall when you are cursed. The most dangerous is tho quite recent change - when you are recalling from combat, it will does a flee first, so NEVER RECALL FROM COMBAT NEXT TO A DT. Debuffs and poison * As I mentioned in previous paragraph, being cursed prevents you from using recall (or being summoned), but there are other dangerous debuff spells - Weakness can make you too weak to carry what you have in inventory so you can't move at all, so does Web Spell, Faerie Fire prevents you from sneaking, hiding or going invisible, and on higher levels you can encounter also other debuffs, so be aware of them, they can last for quite some time. * I would like to especially mention poison. When you get poisoned, not only your regeneration is significantly slowed and you get penalty to constitution, but you continuously lose hitpoints and can die from it. Even tho low level poisons usually wear off quite fast, some don't and it is usually better to have some player to cure it or going to NPC healer (4s2w1n from Temple for the one in Nevrast) to buy a cure. Quaffing potions in combat and other combat actions * Don't. * Unless you have mastered Melee Maneuvers spec, it is better to flee from combat and quaff while out of combat than trying to do it in combat. Quaffing in combat rarely works, the potion usually get smashed. Never go to battle with a lot of healing potions thinking that you will use them to heal while fighting. Heal potions (and any other kind too) are for use between combats. * Be aware that without Melee maneuvers, pretty much every action you take while in combat takes the whole combat round. Imagine that you have in your backpack a healing staff. To use it, you would have to get it from the bag, remove your current hold slot item, hold the staff and use it - it would take you 4 rounds to do all that, don't forget that!. Dump rooms * Some rooms on the mud do have "dump" flag, which means that whatever is dropped in that room on the ground disappears forever - that unfortunately include both your and enemy corpses including all the equipment inside! Return to the Guide. Category:New Player